Walk off the ferry in St. George today and the first thing you pass is still Empire Outlets, the retail complex built to anchor Staten Island's answer to the High Line. Years after its 2019 opening, less than half its storefronts are filled, and Nordstrom Rack, once the mall's marquee tenant, pulled out in 2024. The building went into foreclosure in 2022 owing $38 million to Sterling National Bank and $174 million to Goldman Sachs' Urban Investment Group, then sold at auction for $10 million in 2023. The 630-foot Ferris wheel it was supposed to sit beside never got built at all.
Two blocks up Bay Street, a different story is playing out. A wave of new restaurants has opened there, none of them chasing day-trippers off the ferry. They're built for people who already live here and plan to come back next Friday.
That contrast isn't a coincidence. It's the same decision, made twice, by two very different sets of people.
A Landmark Built for Tourists, Not Neighbors
Empire Outlets was conceived alongside the New York Wheel as a package deal: a 350,000-square-foot outlet mall paired with what would have been the world's largest observation wheel, together meant to pull millions of visitors off the ferry and into Staten Island's North Shore. The wheel collapsed under its own financing before a single panel went up. The mall opened anyway in May 2019 with room for roughly 100 stores, though only about 70 were ever built out, and fewer than half have stayed occupied since.
The math never worked without the tourists the wheel was supposed to deliver. A retail complex sized for millions of annual visitors, sitting next to a ferry terminal that mostly moves commuters, was always going to struggle to fill its own footprint.
The City's Own Words Confirm the Shift
In November 2025, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, working with Council Member Kamillah Hanks and with the backing of Borough President Vito Fossella, unveiled a new vision for both the Empire Outlets site and the vacant Wheel lot next door. The plan calls for up to 2,500 new homes at a mix of income levels, along with open space, community facilities, and neighborhood retail, replacing the tourism-first model with one built around the people who actually live on the North Shore.
NYCEDC President Andrew Kimball and the local officials involved were explicit about the reasoning behind the pivot: after years of a plan built around drawing outside visitors, the redesign is meant to serve residents first.
The city's timeline backs that up. Rezoning and environmental review are set to move through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure starting in the second half of 2026. The Mary Cali Dalton Recreation Center opened on the North Shore this spring. Tompkinsville Esplanade Phase 1 is due to finish in 2028, closing a long-standing gap in waterfront access, and a reimagined Pier 1 is scheduled to reopen to residents that same summer. None of it is designed around ferry tourism. All of it is designed around people who already have a key to an apartment nearby.
Two Blocks Away, a Different Kind of Bet
While the city was still drafting that plan, private operators were already placing the same wager with their own money. A cluster of new restaurants has opened along the Bay Street corridor, and none of them look like tourist traps built for a single visit:
- Aqualine, a new seafood-forward concept from BOTA Hospitality Group, built around a raw bar and a small, considered menu rather than high turnover.
- The Basement, the newest project from chef Julian Gaxholli, who also built Blue, Beso, and Bayou, bringing an American tavern format to the same stretch.
- Beso, the Spanish restaurant that outgrew its original room and relocated to a new location at 70 Bay Street.
- Tavern Next Door, a cocktail lounge built around disco-era drinks and a members-first sensibility rather than walk-in crowds.
- Borikén, a full-service Puerto Rican restaurant and bar adding another distinct cuisine to the same few blocks.
These aren't concepts built to catch someone stepping off the ferry for an afternoon. They're rooms designed around reservations, repeat visits, and a bar regulars will actually remember. That's a different business model than the one Empire Outlets was built on, and it only makes sense if the operators believe the neighborhood's dining audience is now the neighborhood itself.
It also isn't happening in a vacuum. Ruddy & Dean, the steakhouse and seafood room the Mills family reopened under that name in July 2000, has anchored the same stretch for a quarter century by making the same bet the new arrivals are making now. The new wave isn't creating a market from scratch. It's catching up to one that was already there.
The Ballpark and the Theater Are Playing the Same Game
The Staten Island FerryHawks, the borough's Atlantic League baseball club, play their home schedule at Richmond County Bank Ballpark right on the St. George waterfront, with select sections priced at $12 a ticket and games presented by Staten Island University Hospital. That's a price point built for a family that might come back six times a season, not a tourist buying one souvenir ticket on the way to somewhere else.
The St. George Theatre tells the same story from the other direction. Designed by architect Eugene DeRosa and open since 1929, the theater's fall 2026 calendar leans hard into acts built for repeat, multigenerational audiences: Dion on September 19, a Disco Ball 2026 show featuring The Trammps with Earl Young on September 26, the family-oriented Elmo's Got the Moves on October 2, George Lopez on October 9, a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening with live performers The Flesh Junkies on October 24, and a Phil Collins tribute closing out the month on October 30. The theater is even running a community fundraising outing, Laughs on the Links, on October 6, with donations matched two-to-one through the Staten Island Foundation's Diamond Matching Grant Program.
None of that lineup is chasing a first-time visitor. It's booking artists that longtime residents grew up with, in a building that's been serving the same waterfront for nearly a century.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
Put the pieces next to each other and the pattern is hard to miss. The one project on the St. George waterfront that was built explicitly for outside visitors, the outlet mall paired with a wheel that never got finished, is the one that's being dismantled and replaced with housing. Everything getting built or booked around it right now, from the restaurants to the ballpark to the theater's fall calendar, is aimed at the people who already have a mailing address here.
That's a useful thing to know if you're one of them. The next few years on the North Shore are going to bring more housing near the ferry, a longer list of dinner reservations worth making within walking distance, and cultural venues that keep programming for an audience that shows up more than once. It's a neighborhood being built around the people already in it, which is a different kind of investment than a wheel that was supposed to bring everyone else in.
If you're curious what that shift could mean for your own property here, Panache Real Estate tracks these North Shore changes closely and can walk you through what they mean for your home's value. Request your free home valuation whenever you're ready, whether a move is on your mind now or years away.
